Longshoremen to Celebrate May Day with Strike

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced a one-day strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” to take place May 1. They are calling on the AFL-CIO, the Change to Win Coalition, and other unions to do the same. This is a major development for both the labor movement and antiwar movement in the U.S.

The call was first put forward by ILWU Local 10 at a recent West Coast Caucus and was resisted by the ILWU’s top leadership. But rank-and-file support for the call to action pushed it through, with only 3 out of 100 delegates voting against it.

Rank-and-file delegates, that is. If you’re a rank-and-file West Coast dockworker who supports the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, you’re stuck; you lose a day’s pay because the ILWU is more interested in making an anti-war point than representing its members. But then, so many unions these days are putting a political or “progressive” agenda ahead of actual worker representation.

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First you say the strike decision was pushed forward by rank and file, and that leadership resisted the idea. Then you say the union is putting politics ahead of worker representation!Like most reactionaries, you only like democracy when it works in favor of profits and militarism. Unions are just as political as corporations–that is their history. It’s why you don’t have to work seven days a week or for more than eight hours a day.

What, are dock workers not people who can believe that the “war” in Iraq is wrong? And, if social unrest won’t change the minds of those in power, maybe some economic unrest will. We all know money talks louder than the people’s will. And, for once, a Union is using their “political agenda” for a good cause.